A group of students from New York City's Fashion Institute of Technology have developed a biologically derived filament that can be knit, whether by hand or machine, to create a new breed of textile. Composed of alginate, a polysaccharide found in the cell walls of brown algae, the material led the so-called "Bioesters" team to clinch first place at the Biodesign Summit at the Museum of Modern Art last month. Foodies might recognize the stuff. "The form of alginate we experimented with is sodium alginate," Tessa Callaghan, Gian Cui, Aleksandra Gosiewski, Aaron Nesser, Theanne Schiros, and Asta Skocir told Ecouterre. "It's used frequently in molecular gastronomy to create flavored caviar through a process called 'spherification.' It's also frequently used in the medical industry for wound dressing and impression making."

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True story: Archaeologists in England just unearthed a 3,000-year-old—and extremely fragile—ball of yarn. Buried in the waterlogged depths of the Must Farm Bronze Age settlement, a site in Cambridgeshire that has been described as the “Pompeii of the fens,” the artifact is one of a rich cache of finds that includes textiles, beads, and domestic tools. Like other fibers discovered at the location, the yarn is probably plant-based in origin. “All the textiles appear to have been made from plant fibers,” said Margarita Gleba, an archaeologist specializing in textiles. “The people at Must Farm used cultivated species, such as flax, as well as wild plants, such as nettle and perhaps trees, to obtain raw materials.” Not to mention folks back then really knew their stuff, too. “The linen textiles found at Must Farm are among the finest from Bronze Age Europe,” Gleba added. “Wild fibers appear to have been used for coarser fabrics made in a different technique, known as twining.”

To the Berlin-based art collective Raubdruckerin, city streets are literally their artistic inspiration. Translating to “pirate printer,” the group uses city infrastructure as printing elements to create truly unique tote bags, t-shirts and backpacks. Decorative and utilitarian manhole covers, grates, and other metal pieces affixed to the street are slathered up with printing ink on the spot before being imprinted with fresh clothing, making true street pieces that honor the cities they are made in.

Hungarian company Conscei is taking on the concept of truly sustainable fashion, through menswear. Conscei’s goal is to create a fashion model that focuses on protecting the environment, through responsible farming, chemical-free production and ethical sourcing. Using certified organic and Fair Trade materials, the company is using a crowdfunding platform to grow their professional line of classic men’s shirts that will last the test of time, while being kind to the earth.

Donald Trump is overdue for a dressing down, and the Democratic National Convention has tapped comedian Ken Jeong to be the one to do it. In one of a series of comedy videos produced by Funny or Die, Jeong and former White House economist Austan Goolsbee rip into the Republican presidential candidate for calling for a return to American manufacturing on the one hand, but outsourcing the production of just about every Trump-branded item on the other. Jeong is Team Trump at first. “Yeah, you make stuff right here!” he applauds after rolling a clip of the man himself at a rally, saying “Remember when we used to have, ‘Made in the U.S.A.,’ right? When was the last time you’ve seen it?” Goolsbee, however, encourages Jeong to take a closer look.

Police in Bangladesh have arrested a textile-mill supervisor for allegedly torturing a 9-year-old worker to death over the weekend. The boy, Sagar Barman, had been working alongside his parents at the mill for seven months, according to the New York Times. His family have accused Nazmul Huda, an assistant administrative officer at the Zobeda Textile Mill, and seven others of killing Sagar by pumping air from a compressor machine into his rectum. Sagar’s father, Ratan Barman, said he and his son arrived at work at 6 a.m. on Sunday. At noon, a female colleague informed him that Sagar was lying on the floor. The boy was unable to speak and his abdomen was swollen, Barman said. Sagar was transported to a neighboring hospital, then later to Dhaka Medical College and Hospital, where doctors pronounced him dead.

Clothing made from cow manure? Don't pooh-pooh the idea just yet. After all, dung is serious business, particularly in the Netherlands, where a booming dairy industry has already outstripped the so-called "phosphate ceiling" of 172.9 million kilograms per year. Too much phosphate in waterways can lead to algae blooms, which rob aquatic life of oxygen and are potentially toxic to people. But less manure typically calls for fewer cows, which, for the land of milk, butter, and cheese, is a compromise farmers are hard-pressed to make. Eindhoven-based designer Jalila Essaïdi has an alternative solution: create a circular economy that turns excess excrement—and the surplus phosphate it embodies—into useful products. By "deconstructing" manure, Essaïdi is able to tease out the cellulose within and transform it into bioplastics, biopaper, and even biotextiles.

“Fashion has become such an industry, such a business, that we lost a little bit of the beauty of fashion, and a little bit of the skill. …

“We started to work in India in the 80s, so it was a lot of education from both sides before I got them to make the kind of embroidery that I had in mind. These master craftsmen work in villages, and it’s a prestigious job that gets passed on from father to son.

“Sometimes, when you send these products to department stores, they send it back because there’s a little weave or color fault in it. But, you know something? This scarf was made in 45-degree heat and high humidity by an artisan, so the paint doesn’t take as well under those conditions. But should those people have to stop printing because it’s so hot? There is beauty in it, proof that it’s handmade.”